On Belonging and Identity

From time to time, it suddenly hits me. I don't belong anywhere. I left my country, where I grew up. Left my family behind, the familiarity.  There are moments where I feel at ease where I am now, lots of times actually. But then , I suddenly realise, I've not been to a family wedding for a while. Only heard of family members passing away over the phone, not been to see them one last time.

I left home 19 years ago. Another three years, and I would have spent as many years abroad as in my home country. In my heart, I still feel totally Algerian. But I feel definite connections with the places I've lived in: France and England.

But then, it only takes a random sentence, some get-together, to feel excluded. I don't belong. Despite my language and cultural proficiency, I am not French nor English. Actually, I am not sure I still belong in my home country either. And I certainly do not belong in Switzerland!

Ramadan will start in a couple of weeks. For the last eleven years, ever since BK1 was born, I spent most of it in Algeria. There, activity is reduced, life slows right down. Nobody expects you to take kids to the open-door swimming pool in the searing heat while you haven't had a drink or anything to eat for the last 12 hours. Nobody plans a school musical show preceded by nibbles at 5pm. Nobody wonders why on Earth this crazy nursing woman of four kids would abstain from eating or drinking from dawn till dusk.

This year is different. Because the girls are still in school for almost the whole duration of Ramadan, we'll only be able to fast the last few days in Algiers. And it makes me sad. It makes me long for my childhood smells, the market stalls,  the anticipation of sharing a long-awaited meal with my parents, the long evenings, the rituals.

Today is one of those days.

Farewell England

As I sit here surrounded by paperwork, I suddenly realise this is my last week in England. In four days, we will say goodbye to ten years of our lives in Manchester. We're leaving dear friends behind. Our babies were all born here.

When we cam here, we thought we'd go back to southern France after a maximum of two years, once the economic situation improved. 10 years, 3 children and a few local moves later, we are now heading back to the continent. Direction: Basel. How long for? That's anybody's guess.

New adventures await us, linguistic ones not being the least. We'll be in the Swiss-speaking part of Switzerland, with large monorities of various backgrounds. It will be a chance dor the BabelKids to improve their German and be in an inherently multilingual environment. It will be interesting to watch the impact this new chapter in our lives will have on our family's languages and culture. 

Family Language Diagram Update

I feel a bit bad: we haven't updated the family language diagram for ages! I cannot even remember how long ago I touched it. Bad Babeldad!

Then again, the situation has only changed very slightly when it comes to languages. All three Babelkids are now sufficiently fluent to be able to speak pretty normally with native speakers of their four languages. English is the dominating language, by a mile, but it has always been.

So all good in the Babelhouse from a language perspective.

Small Changes

Drill down into details though, and you will notice changes.

BK2 is more and more defaulting to English, when in the past she would speak Arabic or maybe German. We now witness (and sometimes interrupt) long conversations between BK2 and BK1 entirely in English. BK2 starts it, usually.

BK3 has recently jumped onto the bandwaggon as well. And while the long days in school are a good justification for why BK2 does it, BK3 doesn't even go to pre-school yet, so she got it entirely from her sisters!

BK1 is probably the one with the most solid knowledge and command of all four languages, as she's always been. I guess the time we were able to devote to her when she was alone really paid off for her.

Slightly Bigger Change

So all is more or less as usual in our Babelfamily.

Just the right time to overthrow it all and add more complexity to the mix: we're moving to Basel, Switzerland!

This is a work-related move, of course, but we did actually chose Basel on purpose based on its proximity to France and Germany and the hope that we would come into a multilingual environment. I won't make any guesses as to what the move will do to the girls' language, but I'm sure it'll be interesting.

If you were thinking "Basel... hm... German-speaking part of Switzerland, isn't it?" then all I can say is "technically yes", which obviously means "nope!". There's a fine line between a dialect and a language, I guess. For me, personally, Swiss German is a language. I recently spent four days in Basel and quickly found that I was better off speaking English if I wanted to actually understand what people said to me. So, depending on how you see it, the girls will either pick up yet another language (and a new majority language, too!), or learn a dialect that is quite frankly very different from mine.

This blog might just come to life again in September!

Eid Party at School

I have been living in England for nine and a half years. I often get the question: "So what brought you here?" to which I infallibly answer: " Work...".

"Do you like it here?"

"Well, the weather is c**p, I miss my family, but people are nice".

I could also add that people are on the whole very tolerant and open-minded. This is illustrated by this letter the school sent out last week.

Our school is your bog-standard suburban state primary school with about 20% children from an ethnic minority background. 

This morning, all children wore bright party clothes instead of their navy and green uniforms. There was a palpable festive buzz in the playground. Parents were wishing their children a great Eid party. 

It was lovely! How inclusive is that?

I can hardly imagine something similar happening in a state school in other parts of the world...

BombFire night

Every Autumn, the English celebrate Bonfire night, or as my four-year old girl appropriately calls it, BombFire night.
Fireworks can be seen and heard all over, from the end of October, culminating in huge bonfires and firework displays on the 5th of November: Guy Fawkes Night.

Incidentally, our third daughter was born on the 5th of November. So for the last two years, we have been celebrating her birthday with fireworks in the garden. How cool is this?

I choose to believe that the whole of England celebrates my daughter's birthday, rather than an obscure failed coup some 400 years ago!

So happy birthday to my bonfire child!

Oh Brother, where art thou from?

This builder came yesterday, to give us a quote for installing a log burner. The log burner saga has been going on for 6 months, and counting... But this is a post for another day.

So, my friend N recommended this builder. He came straight from doing a job in her house. He is chatty and 'sympathique'.

Builder: "So you come from the same country as N?"
Me: "Yes, I am Algerian"
Builder: "Oh, I thought it was Albania"
Me: "What is it with you English people confusing Algeria with Albania?"
Builder, outraged: "I am not English!!"
Me: "Oh sorry, you are Irish"

Guess he won't be so quick to confuse Algeria and Albania now!

What if? Part 2- Living in France

We never intended to stay in Britain. We never intended for our girls to be born in England, and become English.

We left southern France on a rainy February morning, as if to prepare us for the gloomy weather in Northern England.
When we packed our car that morning, we were convinced we would be back in two years time.

Here we are, eight years later, still in England, with three children, new friends and a new house. Une nouvelle vie, quoi.

Currently, the girls speak Arabic, French, German and English with varying degrees of fluency.

How would have our linguistic situation differed had we been able to stay in France?

To start with, there would obviously have been no English, whatsoever.
Even though we lived in a highly international area, with some stubbornyl-refusing-to-learn-French British expats, French would have been the majority language.

BabelDad and me speaking French at home would have meant the double presence of French inside and outside the home. This would have ruled out MLAH.









Knowing BabelDad, he would have stuck to OPOL. The girls would probably have had some proficiency in German, albeit less than what they currently exhibit.

As for Arabic, I believe that the girls' proficiency would have been pretty low. The reasons, as I see them, are two-fold.

First, I would have greatly struggled to do OPOL. As a virtually-native French speaker myself, I would have had to rigidly speak Arabic with the exclusion of any French. Mission: Impossible.



Second, Arabic in France is un-glamorous, to say the least.  Arabic is associated with a civilisation that "has less value than France's, a civilisation that enslaves women, disrespects individual and political liberties and allows tyranny".

It would have been difficult to normalise the use of Arabic outside the home in this climate.

I can easily imagine how desperate-to-blend-in children would not want to use a language with such a negative stigma attached to it.

Spring (or not) in t'north

I am sat in the living room, looking out into our lovely garden, even Michael Rosen commented on how beautiful it is, and ... chuck chuck chuck, hailstone. This must be the fifth time in ten days. Why, oh why can spring not simply be warm and sunny? Granted, the people are nice in the north of england, but my, the weather is absolutely awful!

I have been blessed to have spent  most of my life in two of the sunniest places in the world. I do wonder what evil I committed in my past to now be punished, by not seeing natural light for three consecutive weeks, in the middle of spring!

April 2011

April 2012

Elementaire, mon cher Watson

BK1 (6 last month) and BK2 are playing playdough in the garden. Conversation is flowing... in English.
Me, slightly annoyed: "lebnett? waaĺah rakoum tahadrou en Anglais?" (Girls, why are you speaking in English?)
BK1: "Parceque both BK2 ou anaya kounna born in England" (Because both BK2 and me were born in England).
Doh.